Yesterday I was doing some errands after work - doing groceries, buying some new mini-muffin tins, birthday presents, etc. I love being out and about early Friday evenings because on the local radio station, Kiss FM, they have “Freak-Ass Friday”, where they play a whole bunch of old school songs. I was jammin’ in my car (is it cool to say “jammin’”? I don’t think so but I don’t know what the equivalent word kids today would use). Anyway, I was jammin’ in my car to some great oldies like “Yolanda” by Reality, “Spring Love” by Stevie B, “Show Me” by the Cover Girls and “Mentirosa” by Mellow Man Ace. Man, I loved “Mentirosa!”
I love listening to those songs from when I was gradeschool and highschool. I remember watching my older cousins dance and go out to party, I wanted to be so much like them! They were so cool to me.
When I was younger, I didn’t have the money to buy records or cassettes, and we didn’t have a tape player on the radio. So I would buy cheap blank cassettes, sit next to the stereo speakers and tape songs on an old tape recorder. The quality was horrible but I would listen to my personal mix tapes all the time. It got a little easier once we got a stereo with a cassette deck.
We used to have an 80’s station in Chicago, but it got bought out by another company. I don’t know if there’s another one, but I really loved that old station. Then again, it makes me feel old because I remember when I was a little kid and I’d hear my dad singing along with the “oldies” station I would think, “Geez, these songs are ANCIENT!” I wonder what Bentoot will think of me when I start groovin’ to “Dangerous on the Dancefloor” (yes, I know groovin’ makes me sound old!)
I got home yesterday from a 10 hour trek back home from San Jose, counting my connecting flights and delays. I barely made my connecting flight in LAX and didn’t even have time to grab some food to eat. FYI - the boxed lunches they sell on the airplane are awful - I got 100% of my daily sodium intake in that one meal thanks to the baked cheese and roast beef jerky. At least I was able to bring a water bottle - though I paid a ton for it since we could only bring drinks bought in the terminal. Also, I was able to bring my lipgloss and lotion (I always get so dry on flights), but they were about to take it away because it wasn’t in a ziplock bag. Fortunately this kind woman in line next to me had an extra one and gave it to me.
Anyway, I was itching to get home. By the time I got there, Dave and Benjamin were already sleeping. I had to restrain myself from waking Ben-a-roo to play with him. I just laid down next to him and watched him for a couple minutes before falling asleep myself.
He woke up at around 6 in the morning. He didn’t cry, he just shuffled around a little and made some squeaks. I watched him and he brought up his little head, looked around, saw me and smiled. I just about melted and all the anxiety about him forgetting me and me having to re-introduce myself to him disappeared. He was so adorable…it’s so hard for me to leave him and to be so far away.
It sucks, though, because I’ve brought back a cold with him. I don’t want Ben to catch it so I’ve been keeping my distance and avoiding my little baby kisses, which is pretty tough to do.
So I’m home for another 4 days, enough time to catch up with my little guy and make sure he hasn’t learned too many tricks while I’ve been gone. He’s already at the point where he can hold on to his bottle on his own…that is, until he gets board and decides to let go.
I know there’s been a lot of news stories on the Fox News interview with Bill Clinton. It’s interesting to read the press about it - there are the people who say he was confrontational, rabid, angry, there are others that applaud him for standing up for himself and showing the democrats it’s ok to use your voice.
However, my favorite news story on the interview is from the Daily Show - Jon Stewart does it the best!
I admit, I’m biased. Clinton is one of my favorite presidents, and although he isn’t as respected in his own country, people all over the world admire him and respect him.
So I’d also like to post this by MSNBC’s Keith Olberman. It’s long and it’s incredibly biased, but I enjoyed reading it:
A textbook definition of cowardice
Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton’s Fox News interview
Sept. 25: “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann comments on Bill Clinton’s interview with Fox News, and calls for an end to President Bush’s “free pass.”
The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.
It is not essential that a past president, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President’s portable public chorus has described his predecessor’s tone as “crazed.”
Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as al Qaida; the nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit.
Nonetheless. The headline is this:
Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done in five years.
He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
“At least I tried,” he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. “That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried.”
Thus in his supposed emeritus years has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by any one, in these last five long years.
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”
The Bush Administration did not try.
Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest “pass” for incompetence and malfeasance in American history!
President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs—some of them, 17 years old—before Pearl Harbor.
President Hoover was correctly blamed for—if not the Great Depression itself—then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War—though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.
But not this president.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.
But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
Except for this.
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly. [Read more →]
The other day my father in law was over making dinner on the grill in the back deck. I was washing dishes and he popped his head in the door and loudly whispered, “Christine, come out here!”
“Hold on, I’m doing dishes…”
“Hurry! You have to come out here quick!”
I came over by the door and he pointed to my backyard. When we bought the house it came with a hammock in the back. Since Dave is crazy about his lawn being green, he always takes it down and rolls it up when he’s done so the hammock doesn’t affect the lawn.
Standing above the rolled hammock was a opossum. He was moving slowly off the roll. “Did he come out from inside the hammock?” I asked
“Yeah, he crawled out from the middle. I guess he was sleeping there. I think he may be dying.”
“Nah…he’s ok.” I said as I went back in to finish the dishes.
A couple minutes later my F-I-L rushes in again and exclaims, “It’s dead! That thing is dead!”
“No, he’s just pretending to be dead. That’s what opossums do, they pretend to be dead when they’re scared.”
“No, he’s dead. I poked him with a stick.” Clearly, my F-I-L is not scared of rabies or sharp little animal teeth.
“He’s pretending…” I said, and continued with the dishes. He went back outside to check on the corpse.
In popped in his head once again - “He’s gone! He ran away while I was talking to you …you’re right! He was only faking it!”
Yep…that’s what opossums do.
Then a week later, Dave found this big guy hanging out on the deck.
At first we thought it was a beaver…but of course, it’s your average woodchuck. But isn’t he a cutie?
I got safely to San Jose - my flight was only 1/2 an hour late. I wanted to call Dave to tell him that I was boarding, but I accidently poked myself in the eye with my phone and popped out my contact lens. I had about a minute of panic, thinking that I’d either have to delay getting on the plane til I found my contact or just sucking it up and wear my glasses for the trip (I wear gass permeable so they’re not disposable, I’d have to get an entirely new lens). Fortunately I found my contact on the seat next to me. I popped it back in, felt a moment’s irritation, and got on the plane.
Four and half hours on a plane with a limited water supply, no chapstick or lotion is sheer torture. At least I got to watch the latest X-Men movie which wasn’t half bad.
I got into SJ at around 1:30am Chicago time. The cab ride to the hotel wasn’t too long…I had a real geeky moment when I saw the Adobe Systems logo on some of the buildings. Once I got to my hotel I saw a bunch of my coworkers at the bar. I debated on saying hello because I didn’t know them that well. Luckily, one of the women I’ve talked to a couple times saw me and gave me a huge hug and said, ‘My girl is here! Now it’s time to party!’ I told her I was too exhausted to party and she said that she would be looking for me tomorrow to make up for it. Some of the other coworkers came over to say hi, which was nice. It’s still weird working for this company, even though we’ve been a part of it for more than a year now. It’s nice to know that there’s a lot of good people that work here.
I had to deal with getting a fridge for my room to store all my milk (because I want to keep on nursing as long as I can) but now everything is settled.
Here I am, on my second trip away from my BennyBooBoo. I’m in the airport waiting for my flight that is - surprise surprise - delayed. I’m heading off to a conference for work. I’m curious to see how this conference will go - the conferences we had for X-Systems were AWESOME. We’d hang out with the clients, play whirlyball, go drinking and dancing all night and walk around like zombies during the day. The conference for X-Company last year was OK, we didn’t really know anyone yet so we just kept to ourselves.
The one cool think about traveling now - something that I’ve been waiting for for what feels like decades, is that O’Hare Airport now has wireless internet. Sure, it’s $7 for 24hr access, but hey, that’s cheaper than other airports, though not free like Portland is. Now I can surf the internet if my flight is delayed (which it will be inevitably) for the price of a McDonald’s “value” meal.
I’ve got my comics, internet and LOST Dvd’s to keep my company while I wait…hopefully my battery will last until I get to San Jose. I’ll probably end up either sleeping or watching the movie anyway.
Ben was asleep when I left, so I didn’t get a chance to see his smiley toothless grin one last time.
I was at my client’s site yesterday, and she was taking me around during lunchtime. One of her coworkers, a friend, came up to her and asked, “Where is the weight watcher’s meeting?” My client walked her over to the room where the meeting was being held (she was a member herself). The meeting hadn’t yet started so people were standing around outside the room.
There were glass doors in front of us looking out on a small lobby. In the lobby we could see three heavy set women who looked like they were lost. My client’s friend told my client, “Hey, they must be looking for the meeting.” “Yeah, let me tell them where it is,” replied my client.
We walked out of the glass doors and my client asked the women, “Excuse me, are you looking for the weight watchers meeting?”
One of the women then glared and said, “No, we’re looking for the HR Benefits meeting.”
“Oh,” said my client, “um, it’s in room 140.”
As they were walking away they were mumbling to each other, “Ha, I know I’m a big woman but I don’t need no weight watchers!” “Thinkin’ we’re looking for weight watchers. Hmph!”
I had to try really hard not to crack up. Actually, I did once they went away. My client was so embarrassed that she thought they were looking for the meeting!
I’ve come to two realizations since I’ve been to Detroit - I have tiny earholes and since I gave birth to Benarooni, my right foot is bigger than my left.
For this trip I’m at a client that is a major car manufacturer and I’m training at their plant. To get to the training room, I need to cross the main factory floor which requires me to wear protective goggles and earplugs, which they had supplied me when I arrived. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to wear goggles, but it is the first time I’ve had to wear earplugs. I stuck ‘em in my ear and went into the factory. Well, actually, I stuck in the right one and took about 5 minutes to get the other one in my left because it kept on popping out. My earhole was too small to fit the little plastic earplug. I know I have small ears, but I never really thought to the level of my earholes. I mean, how often does anyone really think about their earholes?
Since I haven’t been on a trip in a while, since January actually, I needed to go out and get a lot of travel supplies. One other thing I needed to get were some business shoes. My old shoes where worn out and they were getting pretty uncomfortable. That’s what happens when you buy your shoes at Payless! So of course, I bought another pair at Payless. I found a nice pair, but they didn’t have my regular size - a size 8. But since I’m in between a 7 1/2 and an 8, I found a 7 1/2 (i prefer 8’s because I like my shoes loose). I tried on one of the shoes and it fit perfectly, with just a little leeway for socks. I didn’t bother trying on the shoes at home because I don’t have time for those piddly things, the first time I actually wore both shoes I was at the airport for my flight. I put on the left and it fit just fine. I put on the right and “What the ?!?! This shoe is tight on my foot!” I looked at the size on the shoe, and they were both the same. But it was tight on my right foot - my right foot is deformed! Deformed and enlarged by my ex-pregnancy!
